


Soulmates, scars and saviours

by Alex-writes-about-life (Alexwritesaboutlife)



Series: Soulmate AU Undertale [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Underfell, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Frisk dies, M/M, Reader Is Not Frisk, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Underfell Papyrus, Underfell Sans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 19:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7520836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexwritesaboutlife/pseuds/Alex-writes-about-life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Underfell Papyrus' soulmate first meeting. That's it really. Pairs with the Sans one I wrote? There are mentions of a car crash so please don't read if that triggers you or makes you uncomfortable! Take care of yourself!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soulmates, scars and saviours

**Author's Note:**

> Uh hey guys! My only explanation is I'm trash and I really like writing this AU so if you want to see any other AU's or characters/scenarios my requests are open!! Hope you enjoy!

What child hasn’t dreamed of their soulmate? What child hasn’t dreamed of meeting their hero, their Prince(ess) Charming and dancing off into their happily ever after? Every child has dreamed of meeting the one made for them. Especially since the government discovered soulmate technology. 

Everyone has a mark, the first words that their soulmate will say to them inked onto their body from the day they are born. Some are lucky, born with their soulmates name. And some are incredibly abstract. But it’s not a perfect system. Some soulmates die before they ever meet. Some people are born without the marks, people known as blank canvases. Some people have unrequited soulmarks.  
Some people have things happen to them which change them. 

Ever since he was a baby bones Papyrus had longed to meet his soulmate. The one person who would perfectly understand him and was made to be with him. Even Sans’ cynicism could not deter his enthusiasm.  
***

“Sans! Sans!!” The small skeleton monster tugged at his brother’s arm. Sans sighed and put his book down. He didn’t get a lot of time to himself with his part time job as a scientist working at the Royal Lab, but he refused to ignore Papyrus on any grounds. He remembered how it had felt when their parents had done that to him and he wouldn’t subject Papyrus to that kind of psychological torture. He silently thanked Asgore that Papyrus was too young to have remembered their parents, but raising Papyrus alone was hard. His energy far exceeded Sans’ own when he was working all day and had to defend Papyrus from attackers. A young monster left alone all day could be seen as easy prey. 

Still, he plastered a big smile on his face, and turned to his younger brother who was grinning manically at him. 

“Hey bud. What’s up?” He asked the little monster. 

“I wan to show you somethin.” Papyrus had trouble correctly pronouncing his words due to the early sharpening of his teeth that his parents had put him through. He did sound adorable though.  
“Oh yeah? What’s that then?”

“Look! My mark!” The small skeleton pulled up his jumper to show his older brother the words his soulmate would speak to him.

“Woah Paps. You sure you want to be showin’ that to me buddy?” He asked, hoping the little skeleton knew what he was doing. 

“Yeah! Dr Gaster told me I should only show it to someone I trust! An’ that’s you Sans!” 

“Alright then, long as you’re sure.” The skeleton nodded rapidly and pulled the red wool higher, revealing the small cursive letters which circled his upper humerus like a black bracelet. 

‘How on earth do you cope with that each day?’ 

The words made Sans uncomfortable. They sounded melancholy, lost and exasperated. They sounded as cynical as something Sans might say. He didn’t want his brother to be brought down by his soulmate. However, he supposed if anyone could cope with unrelenting cynicism it would be Papyrus. He couldn’t deny you’d struck a chord of mild interest in him. Cope with what? He wondered who you were and what your mark said. 

Papyrus looked at his mark and wondered too. He wondered where you were and why you were hurting so. He desperately wanted to help you. His eyes studied the cursive keenly and his soul called out for yours. But no one came.  
***

At first Papyrus assumed you must be a monster. The thought of being with a human had never crossed his mind. Humans were to be caught, delivered to the capital and killed so that their souls could be used to cross the barrier. That was simply how it was, indoctrinated into him from a young age.  
He stood now 7ft tall and 19 years of age in front of a mirror thinking. A lot had changed since that evening so many years ago. 

Sans had become lazier, developed serious anxiety and narcolepsy, which had gotten progressively worse through the years. He had night terrors and often awoke in the middle of the night. Papyrus had to pretend not to hear his screams as he knew it would only make Sans worse.  
Papyrus himself had been more exposed to the world. He had been thrust into the hard responsibilities of life while he was still young, and as a result had become a harder person. He understood now, why you were so sad. The word was a cruel place. He raised a gloved hand to his skull, to trace the scar which ran through the middle of his socket. 

Yes, the world was a cruel place, the sacrifice of Frisk’s life to free monster kind had proven that. Something about watching his new friend lying on a bed of golden flowers, their head cradled in Toriel’s lap. The way they had merely told them not to waste this opportunity, before their beautiful brown eyes had turned to stone, cold and unseeing. 

Something about the way Sans had tensed in that moment. Something about the nervousness that now seemed to inhabit his brother. The attack on himself when he was still a baby bones which had earned him this scar had proven that. The scar was deep, thin and narrow, the bone around the edges smooth after a life of healing. 

He was still different to Sans though. Sans seemed confused. He was jumpy, on edge. Yet he seemed excited but still depressed. Papyrus wasn’t stupid. He knew Sans must have seen terrible things which caused him to have those night terrors. He knew it must be more than the murders that used to occur Underground. Whilst they were enough to haunt a person’s dreams Papyrus knew Sans. He didn’t flinch when a monster was killed until Frisk showed up. It was as though the human had done something. He also knew depression didn’t go away overnight, and nor did anxiety. But it seemed as though his brother alternated between having good moments and bad moments more frequently than before. His lax attitude disappeared and he seemed to be making an effort to understand something. Papyrus didn’t understand it really, though he often caught Sans muttering to himself, but he merely trusted his brother. He did not want to interfere if he could not help him. He knew what Sans had seen was something no one could help him to deal with besides himself. 

Papyrus himself had become an aggressive monster, defensive of his brother and willing to defend those he loved with his life. Sans was a good counter to him. where Papyrus was anger and passion and fighting spirit and instinct, Sans was calm, prepared, laid back, calculating. They were a good combination, Sans able to reason with Papyrus in his fits of rage, whilst Papyrus was the only monster able to argue with Sans and motivate him to do something. 

He still thought about you a lot, but not with the hope he had had as a baby bones. He thought that if you were a monster he would have met you by now. He helped many monsters move to the surface, and he quickly realised his soulmate was not one of these people. It was so statistically unlikely that you could be one of the few monsters he hadn’t spoken to that he quickly deduced you must be a human. The shock which came with this realisation was not altogether negative. He had his apprehensions of course. It was only natural that a monster might have some concerns about his soulmate being a human. He’d have considered that his mark might be wrong if it wasn’t for the fact that he had seen soulmarks work in real life.

King Asgore and Queen Toriel managed to save their marriage, Undyne and Alphys started a relationship, even Royal Guards 01 and 02 formed a relationship. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Many had thought his soulmate might have been Mettaton, Alphys’ robot, but it turned out Mettaton was a blank canvas. He wanted to keep it a secret because it would be good for his stardom. The robot was finally able to convince people to give him a chance. That he had talent. He wasn’t unscathed by the comments of his audience before Frisk’s arrival but he was glad they managed to convince him not to commit suicide. They even helped him to form a tenuous friendship with Napstablook despite Mettaton’s narcissistic tendencies. Papyrus would be lying if he said he thought a relationship with a human was going to be easy. But, he supposed if you were soulmates then he would try his best. Because Papyrus always gave 110%.

You were a happy go lucky child. You spent your days playing with your friends and dreaming of your soulmate. You’d spend days looking at the words, trying to figure them out. 

What did they mean exactly? 

‘Because where I come from, scars mean strength.’

An odd concept to be sure. You never knew if it was supposed to be taken literally, or if it was merely a motivational message. There were endless ways to interpret it. 

But everything changed one night, and it seemed suddenly that your mark was some kind of sick joke. 

You were in the car with your parents, returning from an evening at your best friend’s house. You were 16 at the time. You were playing with your phone in the back of the car when you heard your Dad swear and yank the steering wheel hard. 

In that moment you could swear you were flying as the car skids across the road. Then something impacted with your head hard. There was a sharp pain in your left eye and the side of your face burned with pain. You screamed till your voice was hoarse and you blacked out. The last thing you saw before you passed out was your phone, lying on the floor of the car blood trickling over broken shards of glass. 

You woke up a few hours later in hospital. The glare of harsh lights gleamed on the hard tiles of the room. Your throat burned with pain, and your left eye throbbed. You couldn’t see anything in that eye, and when you lifted your hand you found it was covered by thick bandages circling your head. 

There was a soft squeak as the door opened and a blonde nurse entered. She seemed surprised to find you awake, but smiled at you kindly. 

“Hello sweetheart. I’m your nurse. You can call me Kelly. What’s your name?” She asked, her voice soft pitched and somewhat mellifluous. It struck you as odd that she wouldn’t know your name if you were on her rota but you ignored it and struggled to give her the reply she seemed to be waiting patiently for. 

“I-I’m Y/N. Y/N L/N.” You croaked, your voice breaking, rusty from a lack of use and combined with your raw throat caused you to wince in pain. 

She smiled at you again, a genuine kindness to it, as well as something lingering underneath. Something like fear…and pity? “Your parents are outside; would you like to see them, Honey?” 

You nodded, avoiding aggravating your sore throat. Her nervousness was making you uneasy, as were the condescending names, and you prayed she would leave the room soon. 

Luck was on your side and she did so, rather promptly as if your presence burned her. 

You heard voices, raised in excitement and a few seconds later your mother threw open the door, your father trailing behind with a silver bucket it his hands. 

Now that you were properly awake you could see brightly coloured balloons with ‘Get Well Soon’ branded across them, and cards with the same message littered over the windowsill, next to a bunch of bright flowers. 

A small scar ran the length of your father’s forehead, and your mother had an arm in a cast. But they both looked at you, tired but happy. 

The next moment you were tackled into a hug by your mother, pressing soft kisses to your face, on any exposed piece of skin she could find. 

“Oh my baby! Oh Y/N are you okay? Oh thank God you’re awake.” You managed to fend her off long enough to croak out a reply. 

“I’m fine Mum. It just…hurts to talk.” Her eyes widened and then lit up. 

“Ah yes of course! We brought you some ice chips! The doctor said they would help.” She beckoned to her husband who was standing awkwardly in the door way, but soon approached you, setting down the bucket on the bedside table. It was filled with small pieces of ice, and you quickly grabbed one, sighing in pleasure as the melted ice soothed your raw throat. Soon you were greedily gulping them down.

Your father smiled at you appreciatively. “We’re glad you’re okay kiddo.” You opened your mouth hesitantly to reply, when a small cough sounded. 

You looked up from the bucket to see a doctor standing in the door way. A middle aged man, perhaps a bit younger than your father, with salt and pepper hair and a small beard. 

“Ah, sorry to intrude, but I need to speak to Y/N about their…condition.” He spoke, as though picking his words carefully, eyeing you as though you were a time bomb and if he said the wrong thing you might explode. Fear began to coil in your stomach. Your parents nodded, and moved to leave, bidding you a hasty farewell, and promising you the would be back once the doctor had spoken to you. 

“Now, Y/N. It’s very important you tell me what you remember.” He spoke in a brisk and business-like manner, a bundle of notes in one hand and a pen in the other.

“I…remember being in a car. Something…something hit us? I remember my face hurting. And screaming. And blood.” The doctor made a non-comital noise. 

“Mmm. That’s very good. You don’t seem to be suffering any form of amnesia or concussion, so I’ll go ahead and brief you. Some debris, we don’t know from where, hit your car and caused the windows to shatter. The impact broke your mother’s arm and scarred your father but I’m afraid you took the brunt of it. A piece of glass hit your face and the force caused it to enter the side of your head, severing the optic nerve. You’re very lucky to not have any brain damage accompanying it. Now I don’t want you to panic, lots of people have partial blindness and cope just fine with everyday life…” His voice seemed to drown in the buzz of your thoughts. 

Blind? You couldn’t comprehend it. This had to be some kind of joke. Some kind of twisted sick joke. It HAD to be. 

You reached up behind your head and tore the bandages off, despite the protests of the doctor. When no light entered your left eye upon the removal of the bandages and eyepatch, you looked desperately for a mirror. The closest thing you could find was the side of the bucket. There, in the reflective silver surface was your face, one side as you were used to, maybe a bit more tired than usual but not horrifying. But the other side told a horrible truth. One eye was milky white, a film of darkness over the pupil, and a scar ran vertically, staring just above your left eyebrow and finishing between your nose and mouth. It was an angry scar, red and purple, with lightly puckered skin. 

They had scolded you and re-bandaged your face for a few days. At first you hadn’t believed it. Shock does strange things to people and was one hell of a drug. You had laughed, even brushed it off as a joke, until it sunk in. You had smashed the mirror they had brought you to look at your scar. They had had to hold you down and sedate you.  
From then on your soulmark was a bitter reminder of your fate. 

Two years on the scar had gone down. The swelling was less pronounced and you were lucky enough that your scar did not cause the skin around it to be puckered and rippled. It was quite smooth, or so they told you. It didn’t cause any disfiguration to your other features. Sadly, you could do nothing more to fix it. After two years of skin grafts and pressure masks you had to accept no amount of surgery or makeup would ever make you look the same, could never fix you. Two years of therapy and you still hadn’t accepted it. 

They would just tell you to come to terms with it. But you couldn’t. Every fibre of your being wanted to reject it, wanted to reject this monster that the scar made you.

Two years later you were 18 and just beginning University. You supposed it was a perk of the scarring. You didn’t like going out anymore, despite your friends trying to encourage you to. It got to the point where they eventually stopped trying. You were glad really. You still saw them of course, they came to your apartment every once in a while and you would have an evening in. Your lack of social interaction meant you had more time to study, and hence you achieved the grades required for university with an ease you might otherwise have struggled to replicate. 

To celebrate and clear your mind for the morning of work ahead you decided to go to your local coffee shop. It was quiet when you walked in, which you were thankful for. 

Apparently not many people wanted a coffee at 12:00 in the morning. 

You didn’t think you could deal with the usual attention the freak with the scar got from people. Oh they didn’t mean it, and with monsters now roaming the streets you would think it was one of the least unusual things they might see. But people still winced when they saw you, still stared for a little bit too long, still talked to your right ear. You knew you should be thankful you survived, and in truth you were most of the time. You were particularly glad your parents survived. 

As you walked up to the counter, the sleep deprived cashier sat up straighter. She squinted at you through her mascara encrusted eyes and winced. You sighed internally, hoping one day you would come across someone who wouldn’t have such a reaction. 

Carefully you ordered your coffee, sighing in relief when your voice came out strong and confident, and not the mouse’s squeak it usually was. Somewhere in your mind the ringing of the bell over the door registered. 

“Yo, what happened to your face? You look like a freak!” The cashier exclaimed, handing you your coffee. You couldn’t deny the words stung. You had thought them yourself many times, but there was something bitterly real about someone else saying them. You heard the person behind you gasp sharply, but you merely ground out “Car accident.” Deciding to give them the benefit of the doubt and hoping it was merely sleep deprivation which had caused their brain to mouth filter to fail, resulting in such a rude comment. They then nodded sympathetically, as if they knew what you were going through. 

You sucked in a breath and despite every cell in your body screaming at you to leave, run home now, escape, you forced yourself to slide into one of the booths, sitting with your back to the cashier. You hoped you looked cool and collected, but in reality as the tears pricked at your eyes you realised you probably didn’t. 

You vaguely heard someone reprimanding the cashier. “Excuse me Miss, but that was quite rude of you. Scars can be a very positive thing, you know.” It was an undeniably male voice. You wanted to stand up and yell at the stranger that no, scars were not beautiful. That they were not something you were proud of, and how could he possibly know whether yours were, especially after just hearing you’d gotten them in a car crash? How could they possibly know what having a scar running your face was like? But you didn’t, instead you lowered your head, and let the tears fall onto the table. 

A few moments later, you became aware of the presence of another person in the booth. Glancing up you realised this must be the stranger who was reprimanding the cashier. He was wearing red gloves, which reached all the way up to his elbows. In one hand he was holding a folded white serviette, which he offered to you to wipe your eyes. Blinking the tears away, you opened your mouth to tell him exactly what you thought of his attempt to ‘defend’ you, when you saw his face. 

He was a skeleton. 

A skeleton with a scar down his right eye. 

He patiently held out the napkin to the human as they raised their head to look at him. They opened their mouth and his eyes widened at the scar running down the left side of their face. Their left eye was milky white, and they were…gorgeous. He’d never seen such an attractive human before. Not even the ones in the magazines that all humans seemed to be in a frantic scramble to replicate the looks of. He realised they were staring at him, mouth agape, and he moved hurriedly to explain himself, when they cut him off. 

‘How on earth do you cope with that each day?’ 

You gestured to the skeleton’s eye, hoping it was clear you were asking about his speech on viewing them positively earlier. From the way he had frozen it seemed you had not.  
“I-I mean; how do you view it positively?” You asked. He clamped his mouth shut and grinned at you. What was so funny? You were about to ask, a little offended, it seemed as though he saw you as a joke. When suddenly he spoke. 

‘Because where I come from, scars mean strength.’

Oh. 

You both seemed to freeze, neither of you quite sure how to proceed when suddenly you broke out laughing. It took a few seconds, but soon he was laughing right along with you. He had a distinctive laugh, it sounded like a Nyah hah hah!

“Oh my God.” You gasped out. “I can’t believe you’re real! My soulmate.” You murmured, suddenly shy. What did you do now??

The skeleton stopped laughing and reached a hand across the table. He gently caressed your cheek, following the path the scar took down your face. You opened your mouth to apologise, to explain you understood if he couldn’t face you. 

“I can’t believe you’re so…beautiful.” He almost whispered the words reverently. “What the fuck did I do to for someone like me to be blessed with such an angel?”

You blushed. It had been a long time since anyone called you that. You wanted to snort at how cheesy it was, but you couldn’t stop smiling. It was hurting your cheeks, and still you smiled more. 

You extended your hand to him over the table. Your hand fit with his like two halves of a whole. 

“My name’s Y/N.” You offered, not taking your eyes off him. 

“I’m the Great and Terrible Papyrus.” He returned, never breaking his gaze from you. Your heart fluttered lightly.

Somehow you felt like you might be strong enough to bear your scar with him around.

**Author's Note:**

> Asks and submissions are open at http://alex-thinks-about-life.tumblr.com/!


End file.
